Make me a “Word” girl

I’ve always been a “words” girl.  Since at least age six when I began my love affair with newspapers, reporting the day’s news to my startled parents, I’ve been a voracious reader.  This, I’m sure, is what helped me win the Reno County spelling bee in the eighth grade and took me to a top 20 finish in the state contest in Topeka.

I love words.

Not only do I love words, I just “get” them.  Words are the paint, the medium that I use to craft a story.  Wielding the pen like a brush, they flow across the pages in my notebook, and pictures unfold.  Colors dance and shimmer.  Textures rough and smooth appear, and characters come to life on the page.

Words.

“The power of life and death is in the tongue,” Proverbs says.  Power of life?  Yes!  Power of death?  Oh.

I halt in my tracks, sharply reminded of the darker side of words.  “Death,” says Solomon.  There’s death in words.

I cringe when I think of how quickly I’ve wielded that sword in anger and impatience, speaking in harsh, angry tones to the ones I love the most.  Why, oh why, am I so careless at times with these that have been entrusted to me?  Lord, forgive!  Lord, anoint!  Lord, guard and preserve.

My heart’s desire – my burning passion – is to be an encourager.  How I love to love others with words of life, with words that build up and nourish.  Words that entertain and spark laughter, that great healer.  Words that challenge others and stretch them, making them think.  Words that point the weary and the discouraged to The Word that was in the beginning.

Apples of gold in pictures of silver.  That’s the beauty and that’s the power of a life-giving word.  At the beginning of a New Year, a fresh slate, I pray that I might have an anointed tongue.  I pray that in the power of the Holy Spirit, I would truly be a “Word” girl, walking moment by moment in the footsteps of The Word.

“The sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary,” Isa. 50:4.